


An Auspicious Day

by burglebezzlement



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Chairs, Christmas, M/M, Post-Book: Carry On, Post-Canon, Tumblr spells, cherry scones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 01:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon, Baz, and Penny at Christmas, one year after the Mage’s death. A Tumblr spell, Baz’s chair collection, and three batches of cherry scones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Auspicious Day

**BAZ**

I get back before Snow on Christmas Eve. To get things set. We’re on our own this year — I don’t want him to feel alone. I want him to remember the good times at Watford. The grass on the pitch and the sour cherry scones.

Bunce was the one who gave me the key to their flat — Snow never thought of it. But Bunce got tired of finding me in the hallway, waiting for him, and took pity. I’m not sure Simon knows I have it. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t care.

I’m sure he would have given me a key. If he’d thought of it.

Three weeks ago, I dropped by Watford and charmed Cook Pritchard into sending a care package of proper sour cherry scones for Christmas. The scones arrived yesterday, December 23, and I hid them in a high cupboard in the flat’s kitchen.

But Bunce’s Normal physics students friends are like a plague of locusts — any food left in the apartment has an exceedingly short half-life once they arrive. 

The scones are gone.

I should have hidden them at Aunt Fiona’s place. (It’s still Aunt Fiona’s place to me. But it’s safe from Bunce’s friends.)

Simon is out with Professor Bunce, surveying more holes. Penny is at her parents’ house in Hounslow.

I am on my own.

**SIMON**

When the Mage died, they discovered that he’d never made a will. And since he’d made me his Heir, that meant that all his worldly goods went to me under Magickal law. 

Dr. Wellbelove didn’t tell me until after the inquiry. He brought me to their house, afterwards. Helen fussed over me and put out a plate of brownies and a pot of tea before leaving me with the Wellbeloves. I had a mouthful of brownie when Dr. Wellbelove told me I’d inherited everything, and I nearly inhaled it in surprise.

Dr. Wellbelove said he hadn’t told me earlier because he didn’t know how things would go if the Coven decided I _had_ meant to kill the Mage. And he didn’t think there’d be much there to inherit anyway, and likely nothing I’d want — some old uniforms of the Mage’s, perhaps, and his Land Rover.

But it turned out that the Mage hadn’t spent any of his money, ever, except on new tights sometimes, so his salary had just gone straight to his Barclays account, for years. 

I didn’t know what to say, at first. “He didn’t give anything to the scholarship fund?” 

Mrs. Wellbelove made a noise. “Why contribute to scholarships when you can just tax everyone else to pay for your students?”

Dr. Wellbelove looked over at her, and then back to me. “It’s hard to be sure if the Mage even remembered he had the account,” he said. “He lived at Watford. His only other possessions were his uniforms, his books — and trust me, we’re still having a time working out who he had his Men confiscate those from — and the Land Rover. The Land Rover wouldn’t be safe for you to drive. We haven’t worked out all the spells he placed on it yet. But the money is yours.”

I felt my stomach clench. “I don’t want it,” I said. “Give it to the Relocation Fund.” (The Magickal Relocation fund — it opened after last Christmas, to help the mages who had to move when I opened the new holes in the Magickal atmosphere.)

Dr. Wellbelove paused for a moment, and then sighed. “Well, son, the money will be in probate for some time yet. You can think about it. No need to make decisions just yet.”

I nodded, knowing that he was trying to give me time to change my mind. But I won’t. I don’t want anything from the man I killed.

(My therapist says not to dwell on killing the Mage — she says I didn’t intend to do it, and I’m allowed to forgive myself. Personally I think I must have intended it, or why would the spell have worked? But I try not to think about it. Using his money would make _not thinking_ impossible.)

Anyway, I get by. I’ve got a care leaver’s scholarship to help with University fees, and I’m eligible for loans for living expenses. Penny and I are doing fine. Mostly. I don’t worry about it.

The Wellbeloves invited me to their house for Christmas. Agatha wasn’t coming home from California. (I think Mrs. Wellbelove is actually relieved that Agatha and I were no longer together, what with my magic disappearing.)

But I wasn’t about to leave Baz alone on Christmas, was I? His father still hasn’t figured out what to do with his queer son, and if I went along, I’d just remind them all of the last Christmas in their old home.

I sent the Wellbeloves a gift — a tin of biscuits — and they sent me a hamper — well, Helen did, I suppose. It was filled with baked goods and a Dr. Who teapot. 

**BAZ**

I wasn’t about to leave Simon on the one-year anniversary of what happened at Watford — or on Christmas.

Aunt Fiona was spending Christmas at some Czech ski resort with some American wizard she’d met at a vampire control conference.

My stepmother insisted on some observance of the holiday, though, so she brought my siblings into London for the day to see me. 

“Your father sent you his regards,” she told me when we met. “He had to attend a conference on Magickal livestock.”

I nodded. Father must be confused; on the one hand, I was dating the man who’d managed to rid the World of Mages of the Mage and the Humdrum in a single day. On the other, his son was still queer. So.

Sometimes _I_ still can’t believe that Simon Snow is my boyfriend. It’s hardly Father’s fault that he’s confused.

Daphne had arranged an enormous tea in a private dining room, and insisted on exchanging gifts. She didn’t invite Snow. I didn’t ask her to. She didn’t mention him. I didn’t either.

Mordelia wore a rainbow jumper over a rainbow skirt, but it’s hard to say whether that was a statement of political support. Mordelia is 8. Rainbows can mean anything at that age. 

My stepmother gave me a huge hamper of food before they left — including several of the things Snow liked last year. 

Perhaps she’s warming up to the idea of Snow.

Perhaps next year I’ll bring him along. 

**SIMON**

One of Penelope’s projects is Tumblr — she’s trying to come up with a meme she can seed that will lead to a spell to remove my wings. She doesn’t mention this particular project around Baz. I think she thinks he likes the wings.

Baz won’t tell me what he thinks about them.

I pointed out that Tumblr memes only last a day or two, but Penny says it doesn’t matter — “Honestly, Simon, do we need a spell to remove everyone’s wings? It’s just _your_ wings I care about.” And then she cast one of her spells in progress on one of the little angel statues she ordered from a religious supply warehouse in Walsingham to test her spells. 

The statue shattered.

Things like that don’t stop Penny, though. I think next term she’s taking a course in Normal advertising, to see what other spell seeding possibilities are out there. (Baz told her about the KitKat spell.)

Penny also thought we should get a cat. I think she was doing a segment on emotional support animals in her Normal psychology lectures, but I went along. But when we went to the RSPCA, all the cats could see my tail — apparently **These aren’t the droids you’re looking for** doesn’t work on cats — and they kept trying to play with it.

**PENELOPE**

“Love you too,” Micah says, and I close out the Skype window on Mum’s computer. I miss him — he just finished his exams at Yale a day or two ago, and he's traveling back to spend Christmas with his family before flying over to London for a couple weeks ahead of the new semester. 

I feel guilty spending Christmas in Hounslow, even though Baz and Simon said not to. Not to feel guilty, that is. (And I won’t miss their flirting for a few days.)

I tried to get Agatha to bake biscuits with me over Skype, for old time’s sake. But she said she buys her cookies (!) at Trader Joe’s now. She’s really gone Normal.

Simon’s been quite game about fitting in with the Normals. I think we — Baz and I — forget that he never really fit in with them before. He was raised among them, but his magic always kept him apart. The same magic that made him attractive to the Magickal world kept the Normals from warming up to him.

Now that he has no magic, he seems to befriend every Normal he comes across — too many of them for me.

“It’s no different from your Physics nerds,” he said, when I complained about him inviting the neighbors in for tea. The neighbors! The people who live next to us! For tea! The Physics team is completely different, they’re _colleagues_.

Between learning Normal ways — not just Normal ways, but _normal_ Normal ways, if you see the difference — and classes, and helping my father with his surveys over the weekends, and spending time with Baz, and his therapist — Simon is doing better. I think. 

But the wings are a problem. He had to leave a running group he joined after my spell wore off while they were running across Millennium Bridge. 

And I still feel guilty leaving Simon and Baz for Christmas. We spent last Christmas together, even if it was the worst Christmas ever. 

I’ll keep working on the wings.

**BAZ**

I manage to dig out caster sugar, baking powder, and self-rising flour from the flat’s disorganized cupboards. Simon hoards high-fat foods, still, which gives me eggs and butter. 

The recipe is harder, but Bunce’s laptop password succumbs to a quick **Let me in!** and Google digs up a scone recipe from some television presenter called Mary Berry.

The cherries, though. The cherries present a problem. 

Being as we will be on our own at Christmas, Snow and I have attracted several attractive hampers of food from various friends and family, some of which were delivered after Bunce’s physicists left, leaving them untouched. Unfortunately, digging through them fails to reveal cherries, dried or sour or sweet or glace or any other variety.

I look at the recipe thoughtfully, and then dig through the back of the fridge. Bunce became enamored of Normal mixed drinks a few months back — surely they still —? Yes. A jar of Maraschino cherries in liquor.

There is no milk, of course, but Bunce has 0% yoghurt. Close enough, surely?

I start mixing.

**SIMON**

It’s cold out — almost cold enough to start snowing in Milton Keynes, where Professor Bunce and I are surveying one of the holes that opened last year. My hands are frozen inside my mittens while I hold the surveying stake. 

Professor Bunce and I wrap up our survey in the late afternoon, by which point my lips are almost as cold as Baz’s would be in this weather. I’m well ready for tea. The hampers are calling my name.

What I’m not expecting to find, when I get back to the flat, is Baz.

When I open the door, the flat smells of baking and something sweet. Bas is leaning against the kitchen counter, drinking some sort of sloshy red liquid out of a jar and morosely watching a batch of burnt scones levitating around the kitchen. His hair is falling down over one eye.

“Baz! What’s going on?”

“It’s not blood, Snow,” he says, sloshing the jar towards me and raising it to his lips.

“I meant the aerial baked goods.” I know the jar wasn’t blood — Baz gets his blood from a Halal butcher on Portobello Road. It’s thick stuff, doesn’t slosh at all. 

“You were supposed to come back to Mrs. Watkins’ sour cherry scones,” Baz says. “But Bunce’s trained locusts destroyed the sour cherry scone crop.”

It takes me a moment — ah. The physicists. I’d hidden the Wellbeloves’ hamper under my dirty laundry pile to keep them out.

“So you tried baking them yourself?” I ask. I’d thought that Baz’s idea of cooking was coming over with a carrier bag full of curry and a plastic takeaway cup of blood.

Baz nods. “But Bunce doesn’t keep sour cherries around, and she’s run out of milk, and your oven doesn’t respond to magic _at all_.”

“Did you try the gas?” I ask. Actually, I’m the one who does the shopping — if we waited for Penny to go to the shops, we’d all starve. (Baz included — he does most of his eating here, I think.) 

Baz glares at me. I reach up for one of the floating scones. It’s a sad thing — weeping cherries sticking out, a burnt bottom, and (when I break it open) a soggy, undercooked inside.

“It’ll be delicious with butter,” I say, slipping an arm around Baz’s shoulders while he’s distracted. 

Baz lets his head fall onto my shoulder. With him so close, I can smell that whatever was in that jar was alcoholic. “Just didn’t want you to miss Watford,” he mumbles.

I kiss the top of his head. “Don’t be silly.”

It’s a side of Baz I never saw at Watford — not that he’s tried cooking before. He lets Penny and I do that, and eats if we put food in front of him. (Baz eats food in front of both of us now, too. I thought Penny would insist on inspecting his fangs, but she took it in stride.)

Baz started reading some Normal decorating blog a few months ago, and started talking about “flat therapy” and making me visit boot sales with him for what he called “authentic decor.” He got dead obsessed with Normal chairs — all sorts. Heavy Victorian ones with gargoyles carved in and lightweight plastic ones in bright colors and a weird one with leather straps that looked like it belonged in a posh salon.

But then his aunt Fiona came back from Prague for the weekend, found the flat full of Baz’s chairs, and threatened to make him move back in with the numpties if he made any other changes. 

He’s been spending almost all of his time at our apartment since then, but he doesn’t try to decorate.

Sometimes I wonder if he’s afraid to get too attached to us. Me, I mean. And Penny, I think, sometimes, too.

I carefully relocate the jar from his hand to the sink, and give him a hug. “Thank you.”

“They’re terrible,” Baz says from my shoulder.

“Nonsense.” I kiss the top of his head again.

And anyway, Baz is the only thing from Watford that I could miss. 

And everything is edible with enough butter. 

**BAZ**

Snow is wrong — the scones are terrible. We end up spending Christmas Eve with a curry (actually several curries — Snow still eats like he has years of starving to catch up on. I guess he has).

The next morning, the weather is still gray and raw and windy, and Snow decides that I need to come running with him.   
“It’s your fault,” he says, smiling so I know he doesn’t mean it. “If you’d learned Penny’s robot spell, people wouldn’t be bumping into me.”

He’s not wrong; I’ve seen what happens when he tries to walk amongst the Normals with **Nothing to see here**. 

“But it’s Christmas morning,” I point out. “There won’t _be_ any Normals out there today. You could probably run with your wings showing and they’d just think it was some Christmas stunt.”

Simon responds by throwing a pair of trackie bottoms at me. 

I give in. I always give in to Simon in the end. I’m not sure if he’s realized this. Yet.

After several miles of cold, Simon’s cheeks are bright red, and his hair is more mussed than usual when he takes off his hat.

When we get back to the flat, we shower and re-attack the hampers and generally spend the rest of the afternoon acting like happy boyfriends.

No, _being_ happy boyfriends. At least I think that’s what we are — when Simon’s not worrying about his wings, and I’m not worrying about whether Bunce will decide I’m over too often, and have Simon kick me back to Aunt Fiona’s flat and decide not to join me there. (I know he hates it at Aunt Fiona’s. I can’t blame him. I hate it too.) 

When Simon’s not worrying about money — he thinks I don’t know, but I notice. I notice Simon. I notice everything about him.

When we’re not worrying about _last Christmas_.

**PENELOPE**

Mum gets back from Watford on Christmas Eve. Premal arrives Christmas morning, bringing gifts — he’s been working for the Coven, helping figure out where all of the items the Mage confiscated from the old families came from, and figuring out which bits are safe to give back. Most of the Mage’s Men have found other employment, or went to Uni — most of them aren’t much older than me. Premal will probably start at Uni next year. 

After Christmas tea with my family, I head upstairs and start idly paging through Tumblr.

And that’s when I see it. I feel my heart leaping up into my throat — _the Doctor Who Christmas Special_. He’s used his Sonic Screwdriver to spell a Weeping Angel free of her wings. And he’s done it while his latest plucky companion says “Doctor, take off these wings!”

It’s been gif’d all over Tumblr, and it’s made it out to the wider web.

I take out one of my test statues with trembling hands. **_Doctor, take off these wings!_**

And the wings fall off.

**BAZ**

By Christmas afternoon, we’ve demolished the hampers, but the scones I made aren’t quite as horrible once Simon toasts them in the oven and adds butter. 

Simon insists on watching the Dr. Who Christmas special, and for once I don’t fight him on it. It’s stupid, of course. But I love Simon’s face when he tries to explain Normal culture to me. 

We’re curled up on the couch together, nearly asleep, Simon’s wings moving slightly with his breathing, when Bunce comes bursting in. Her hair is frizzier than usual, surrounding her face. Outside the window, it’s sleeting, which explains the frizz. 

“Get up,” she says. “I’ve figured it out."

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“The wings,” she says, shaking her head. “We’ve got a spell. But we have to use it _now_."

Bunce explains her improbable television spell three times over and de-wings three small angel statuettes before Simon believes her. I’ve got the idea from the first explanation — and I don’t like it.

Bunce is like a merwolf when she gets an idea in her head — her teeth bite into the neck and won’t let go. “It’s safe,” she insists. “It has to be. But we have to do it now.”

Simon watches us fight. “Absolutely not,” I say, not for the first time. It’s not about the wings; I know Bunce thinks I like them, but I don’t. 

I just don’t want Simon to be hurt. Not again. 

“He won’t be,” Bunce insists.

“The first person to cast **Up, up, and away!** on themselves ripped their lungs out,” I say. New spells are _dangerous_ , Bunce knows this. Which makes her insistence on casting this one —

I look at Simon — he’s on the rug between us, his arms around his knees and his tail lashing about. 

And of course he’s the only one whose opinion matters, really, but I can’t — “Simon?”

He looks up at me and I drop down to my knees next to him. 

“I want to go for a run,” he says. “With the Normals, without you or Penny needing to spell me.”

“Then we need to move quickly,” Bunce says, jumping on his weakness. “Oh, don’t curl your lip at me like that, Baz.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“You know these meme-y things don’t stick!” Bunce says. “I’ve studied this, Baz. For every ‘angels have the phonebox,’ a hundred more phrases die in forty-eight hours or less.”

**SIMON**

It’s not that I want to be a Normal. I won’t ever fit in that world — I didn’t even as a kid.

But I’d like to be able to hang out with them, get to know them. If Penny and Baz ever left… I don’t think I could.

“Can you do another test statue?” I ask Penny.

She nods, and runs to her bedroom to get another.

“I don’t like this,” Baz says, before she gets back. Again.

I take his hand. “I know. But if there’s anyone who could make this work….”

Penny’s back with the statue. 

Her spell works, again, cleanly severing the wings. The angel’s back is left smooth.

Baz’s face looks blank, like it always does when he feels threatened and doesn’t want to let on. “You haven’t tried it on anything living.”

“I don’t exactly have any living angels to try this out on,” Penny says. “Look, this is the perfect spell. It’s like someone knew what we needed. This will work.”

Baz’s lip curls, revealing his fangs. “You’re not willing to de-wing a pigeon or five, but you’re willing to test this on Simon?”

“It might not work work on a pigeon,” Penny argues. “They’re birds.”

“And Simon’s an angel?”

“It’ll work,” Penny insists. 

Baz’s arm slips around my waist, and I lean into him. “You don’t have to do this,” he says to me. “If you really need to get rid of the wings, there are other options. We can talk to Dr. Wellbelove. I’m sure he could do something — maybe get the NHS to pay for a de-winging surgery. Or I’ll help.”

I breathe in, smelling Baz’s hair. “I don’t want to talk to Dr. Wellbelove,” I say. “He’ll insist on using the Mage’s —“

I realize what I’m saying and stop. I didn’t tell Penny or Baz about the Mage’s money.

Penny’s eyes narrow. “Using what of the Mage’s? A spell?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. I don’t even like to think about it.

“You need to tell us,” Baz says. “If Dr. Wellbelove has another option.”

“It’s not about the wings,” I say, and then give in to Penny’s face, which promises endless questions. So many questions. 

“Fine. It’s about the Mage’s money.”

**PENELOPE**

I’ve spent the last year looking for a spell for Simon’s wings. In my imagination, this always ended cleanly — Simon’s wings falling off, a grateful Simon thanking me again, Baz being blown away by my brilliance…

It’s nothing like that at all. Baz’s first question was “How do you know Simon won’t go into shock? Normals who lose limbs almost always go into shock.” and it goes downhill from there.

But there’s still something about this spell, about it coming right at Christmas, that feels _right_ — like someone was looking out for Simon. Someone apart from me, I mean.

And then Simon says the thing about the money, and I realize that maybe Simon has been worrying about more than his wings.

“What money?” Baz asks. 

“The Mage’s money,” Simon mumbles. “I — I was his Heir.”

I can’t believe I didn’t remember that before. And also — “The Mage had money? Really?”

“Dr. Wellbelove said he never spent his salary,” Simon says. “It’s — it’s nothing like your family’s money, Baz. But it’s a lot. I mean, by my standards it’s a lot.”

Baz pushes Simon’s hair back. “Crowley, it’s the least he could have done after everything he did to you.”

“What he did to me?” Simon asks. “I killed him, Baz.”

“Bunce killed the Mage,” Baz says. “And don’t think the fact that my mother’s death was avenged by Penelope Bunce doesn’t keep me up at night.”

“Simon,” I say. “You took out loans this term, didn’t you? Why? Did you not know yet?”

Simon looks at me like I’ve lost the plot. “I can’t _spend_ it,” he says. 

“That’s ridiculous,” I say. “But we can talk about that later. We’ve got to get your wings off while the spell still works.”

Baz raises an eyebrow. “Why does this spell working matter so much to you, Bunce?”

And for a moment, I can’t remember why. 

“It’s supposed to work,” I say, finally. “Everything’s supposed to work out. I’m supposed to fix things. It’s supposed to be the end of the story.”

Simon and Baz look at me. “The end of the story?” Baz asks.

**SIMON**

Penny’s lower lip is trembling, but her voice is even. “Things are just supposed to work out, aren’t they?”

“Crowley,” Baz says. “Do you still think you’re the Chosen One’s sidekick?”

“Dread companion,” Penny says, automatically.

Baz squeezes my hand, but he keeps looking at Penny, and from his voice, I can tell he’s trying to be soft with her. “I don’t think it works like that anymore, Bunce.”

Penny takes off her glasses and starts wiping them on her shirt. “What do you mean?”

“Everything with Chosen One here used to be a story,” Baz says, squeezing my hand again. “But I think that’s over now. I don’t think the story’s going to keep him safe any more.”

Penny looks at her row of wingless angels, and then back down at us.

“I think I’m the sidekick now,” I find myself saying. “You two are the brilliant wizards. I’m just the Normal average human with all the weaknesses —“

“You have wings,” Baz says to me. “And you’ll never be Normal or average to me.” He turns back to Penny. “But I do think Snow’s out of the Chosen One game. I think trying this spell on him would be exactly like trying it on any other Normal. And if you’re not prepared to try it on a pigeon….”

Penny looks like she’s about to start crying, but she nods. “Okay.”

And then we sit there, on the living room floor. 

Outside the window, it’s still sleeting.

**BAZ**

Snow and I are almost asleep when he looks up at me from his terrible mattress. “This isn’t working, is it?”

I can’t find the voice to say anything, but he must feel my entire body tense up. “No! No, Baz, not — not this, between us.” I nod, willing my heart to calm down, and he goes on. “Merlin, Baz, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

“I know,” I say, but I’m still caught on his words. “What isn’t working?”

“Living like this.”

Simon’s room is almost entirely dark, but with the street light from outside, I can see his face. (He can’t see mine.)

And just a little bit, I’m letting myself hope that I know where he’s going with this.

“We lived together for seven and a half years,” Simon says, going on. His hand is tracing slow circles on my back. “And then, after last Christmas — I got put under house arrest, and you went back to Watford. And we’ve been living separately since.”

I’m not sure I can trust my voice, but I can nod.

“I’m not sure how you feel,” Simon says. “But — would you be up for abandoning the experiment? Moving in with us?”

Crowley, it’s a good thing Simon can’t see my face right now… I blink back tears. “I think… I could try that,” I say. But my voice cracks, and I know Snow must know how much this means to me.

“Assuming Penny agrees,” Simon says. “Merlin, I should have asked her first….”

“I don’t think she’d mind,” I admit. “She’s the one who gave me a key.”

In the near-dark, I can see Simon’s eyes widen. “You have a key?”

“How did you think I was getting in? Magic?”

“Well, yeah,” Simon says.

“I’m not about to let your Normal neighbors see me casting **Open Sesame!** ”, I inform him. “And anyway, Bunce has the door spelled against it.” The flat’s door is much better warded than her laptop, come to think of it.

“I’ll talk to her in the morning,” Simon says.

“One condition,” I say. “If I’m moving in, you are getting a new bed.”

“Anything,” Simon says. “We’ll go to IKEA tomorrow. First thing. Right after they open.”

“A new bed that’s not from IKEA,” I say, pulling a face that I know Simon can’t see.

And Simon laughs in the near-darkness, and I wrap my arms around his wings. And it feels like the very beginning of something new.

**PENELOPE**

In the end, I convince Simon to give some of the Mage’s money to my father, to fund his research into the holes. My father’s been saying how helpful Simon is — now he can pay Simon for his help with the surveys.

That makes it okay for Simon, somehow. My father is already planning out a full time job for him for next summer. 

Simon still has his wings, and his tail. He and Baz are talking about what to do next, or if they want to do anything. Baz has also agreed to watch Star Wars.

Baz lets me come with them when he moves his things from his Aunt Fiona’s. I’ve never been there before — it’s stark. Black furniture, dingy walls. Except for the living room, which is crammed full of chairs. All kinds of chairs. It looks like the world’s least organized waiting room.

“We’re not taking all these chairs,” Simon says. “Those gargoyle chairs creep me out.” (Actually, one of the gargoyles looks a bit like Simon, but I don’t say so.)

“You just don’t appreciate fine Victorian craftsmanship,” Baz says. But he leaves the gargoyle chairs behind.

Apart from the chairs, Baz has very little for us to load into the mini-cab — clothing. Lots of little bottles from the bathroom. Baz dumps out the blood from the fridge — “Most of it’s gone bad, and I don’t want to think about what Aunt Fiona might do with it.”

Baz thinks his Aunt Fiona has a thing for Nicodemus Petty. He’s probably not wrong.

In the end, Baz chooses his five favorite chairs to bring with us, and arranges the rest of his weird chair menagerie in his Aunt Fiona’s bedroom, facing her bed like an audience. He leaves a note on one of the chairs — “Went to live with the numpties.”

“I’m not sure what that says about Penny and me,” Simon says. And Baz kisses him. 

**BAZ**

Bunce has Micah coming to stay after Christmas, so Simon and I tactfully decide to spend a few days elsewhere — not at Aunt Fiona’s (she’d been dead angry about the chairs, and I still don’t trust her not to curse Simon). We end up in a hotel in Oxford, not far from my family’s new place.

It is — awkward. But everyone is trying. Even my father is trying. And Mordelia wears her rainbow jumper every day.

When Simon and I get back from visiting my family, he’s the one carrying all our things, so I’m the one with a free hand to unlock our door, and let us into our flat.

Bunce is sitting on the couch with Micah, the two of them peering intently into a laptop screen. She looks up when Simon drops all of our bags on the living room floor.

“Simon!” she exclaims. “Baz!” And she sounds almost as happy to see me.

“We’re back,” Simon says, and then looks down at all our bags like he’s just realized that he’ll have to pick them up again to move them all into our room.

Bunce introduces me to Micah while Simon gets our bags put in on our new bed, which we did not find at IKEA, thank you very much.

“Simon told me about your scones,” Bunce says. “The ones from Watford, I mean. I’m sorry the locusts got to them.”

“You’re forgiven,” I say, sitting down on one of my chairs. “I will be keeping my blood under lock and key to keep it away from those thieves, though.”

Bunce looks at Micah, who shrugs. I think she’s told him I’m a vampire. I’m fine with that, really.

“I felt bad,” Bunce says. “So I bought some sour cherries, and Micah and I made scones for you and Simon.”

**SIMON**

Penny and Micah’s scones are crisp, a little salty, and delicious with a thick slab of butter.

They’re almost like the ones at Watford, but not quite.

These scones are _even better_.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is, of course, a wholly fictitious Dr. Who Christmas special.


End file.
